Henri Nouwen Quotes

Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.

Sometimes, when you act with someone in an intimate capacity, you have to ask vulnerable questions to speed up intimacy - but that's artificial.

Intimacy, as I am using it, is sharing my reality with you.

Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It's the magic sauce.

I don't fear commitment and people in my world getting too close.

Intimacy is healing.

With my fan base, I'm just vulnerable. I'm very transparent and vulnerable.

Look your significant other in the eyes, make that connection.

I don't have any fear of intimacy, but rather thrive on it, which is rare in a public person.

A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.

It's all about the director for me; we have to click. It's a trust thing. I'll say I'm ready to let down my walls. I'll cry for you as long as you need. But you're going to have to hug me afterwards.

If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.

I think you have to be guarded but not closed off.

My work is about the establishment of trust. For someone to share their authenticity with me is a soul-to-soul thing. It's not a lens-to-soul thing.

People who find that they have a lot of drama in their relationships need to allow themselves to get 'bored'. At first, it will feel excruciating, and they may find themselves confronting a very real fear underneath all that drama: being truly close and therefore vulnerable to another human being.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

It's not like you can wake up and realize, 'Oh, I want intimacy,' and then it happens that day.

We are really on top of one another at the moment and I think it is amazing how we stay so close. Maybe that's the test. Why not totally put yourself together, rather than always wonder whether you actually like each other?

Intimacy is something to be cherished, and intimacy is not something to be afraid of.

Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It's about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there?

A conversation goes sometimes into personal things and that's nicer. You look to each other and you have a different picture, you get into a relationship.

I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn't feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

People are so fearful about opening themselves up. All you want to do is to be able to connect with other people. When you connect with other people, you connect with something in yourself. It makes you feel happy. And yet it's so scary - it makes people feel vulnerable and unsafe.

I think when I show my vulnerability, people relate with that because they know deep down inside that they have vulnerable moments, and they can really connect and identify with me on those things.